


Circulation

by La Mère Duchesne (musamihi)



Category: Les Misérables - Hugo
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-18
Updated: 2010-03-18
Packaged: 2017-10-08 02:44:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/pseuds/La%20M%C3%A8re%20Duchesne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Combeferre does his best to take care of Enjolras, though he gets precious little cooperation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circulation

His eyelids fell and his head bowed to one side, as though suddenly heavier; his lips, nearly white, parted slightly to draw in a labored breath. For a moment his face was carved from stone, all one color, and still. Then life came back to him, though the pallor remained. He opened his eyes, and seemed to see nothing - his hand shook as he raised his arm, one inch, two inches -

The doctor pushed it back down onto the featherbed, and busied himself with his tourniquet. "That will do - keep still, now." At long last the blood stopped running into the pan. There was a faint smell of iron and wet pewter. The liquid collected there grew slowly darker as he snapped his case shut, returned the stool to its rightful place on the opposite side of the room, and replaced his hat with a polite, truncated bow. The curtains drifted apart, fell back together - apart and back, and apart and back again - as he gave his instructions. And then he left, pulling a humid draught through the room as he opened the door.

Combeferre leaned over the patient with a deeply satisfied smile. He pushed aside the strands of fair, fine hair that had fallen across that mask-like face, and lowered himself, ever carefully, onto the side of the bed. "Medicine," he said, with his customary quiet cheer, "Is a truly remarkable art. Do you not agree?"

"... Art." Enjolras swallowed, and raised his eyes, in fits and starts, from the mesmerizing drapes. "Just butchers, barbers ... close the sash."

"I will not. You need fresh air, don't you remember? I know the smell is hardly ideal, but - that's summer, isn't it. City living has its price." He laid his hand on the patient's forehead. "You slander the profession, and yet I find you are wonderfully sedated - transformed, beyond recognition. Only minutes ago, it seemed not I nor the hosts of any great nation could keep you from leaping out of bed as though nothing were the matter at all."

"He did not need to let my blood - the sickness would have passed ... had I gone to see to useful things. And now I'm only - cold."

"I can feel, yes." Combeferre rolled Enjolras's sleeve gently down the length of his arm, avoiding the bandage at his elbow. "But the doctor's orders will trump yours, today. You're lucky he's not a humorist - I don't know how one is supposed to be relieved of choler. Now. Shall I read to you?" He stood, and wandered over to the great bookcase beside the door to search for something restful, something that would keep the patient's mind easy. He heard nothing but the rustle of fabric, and turned around - Enjolras had set his gaze once again upon the curtains, willing them to cease their motion. Combeferre sighed, and returned to him empty handed.

"How sad you make me," he said, slipping his shoes onto the floor and lifting himself once again onto the bed. He lay beside his friend, sinking luxuriously into the pile of blankets he had mustered from the closet to comfort the stubborn boy. "This may be the only peace you'll have for months to come - the only rest. But you'll have none of it. Don't you find that peace is preferable? Won't you close your eyes, and let what will happen happen? Science teaches us that the body - like the year, like day and night, like all of nature - rights itself with time. Your passion is unnatural and unnecessary: a man had to leech it out of you - I speak figuratively - to allow you to heal. You only harm yourself with all of this. Violence brings nothing but bloodshed, as I've said to you before. Can't you feel the truth in quiet? The right of it? Your mind is clearer now. You know the day will come without all of your raging. You are peaceful."

Enjolras frowned, impatient. "I am weaker; that is all. I'll listen to you read - go find a book, no poetry. I've wasted time enough."

"I'll ask the doctor if there's some cure for your particular brand of deafness, next I see him. I hope it stings." He pressed his lips to that face, smooth and cold as marble, and felt a chill. It occurred to him then that death was an essential moment in the natural cycle, in the righting of things. He got up again, with some reluctance, and returned to the bookcase, where the curtains were sending afternoon shadows up and down, up and down the ordered spines.


End file.
